Assault on anti-spam firm said to be web's largest

BBC News reported today that a 35-year-old Dutch citizen has been arrested in Barcelona, Spain following one of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to date.

The Dutch public prosecutor who requested the arrest identified the suspect as only "SK" - believed to be Sven Olaf Kamphuis, owner and manager of Netherlands-based web hosting firm Cyberbunker.

The arrest follows what prosecutors described as "unprecedented heavy attacks" against anti-spam firm Spamhaus, an assault which also slowed data speeds on neighboring networks.

Revenge by DDoS?

Non-profit anti-spam firm Spamhaus maintains a blacklist which companies use to identify unwanted junk mail and keep it from flooding their customers' email inboxes - including those hosted on Cyberbunker servers.

The blockade reportedly didn't sit well with Kamphuis, who argued in the press that Spamhaus had no right to decide "what goes and does not go on the internet."

Suspect "SK" is accused of launching a massive DDoS attack which flooded Spamhaus web servers with upwards of 300 gigabits per second of data over several days in late March - substantially more than traditional attacks that push only 50Gbps by comparison.

The arrest in Barcelona was a cooperative effort with other EU authorities, and Spanish police are expected to soon transfer the suspect to the Netherlands for prosecution.